The Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has taken the Nigerian Automobile Policy to the cleaners, accusing the policy of making life more difficult for Nigerians even as it accused some vehicles assembly plants in Nigeria of insincerity.
The Director General of LCCI, Mr. Muda Lawal, said this last week in Lagos while presenting a paper titled, “ International/Domestics Trade laws: Benefit of Compliance of trade laws by the trading community” at a seminar organized by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that in 2014, the Federal Government started the implementation of the automobile policy where 35% tariff will be paid on fairly-used vehicles. This policy they said will help boost local assembly of vehicles.
Speaking during the event last week, the LCCI said that going by the high exchange rate, the automobile policy is a problem to everybody.
It said that the citizens are still dealing with the exchange rate and the government went ahead with the policy.
“On the issue of automotive policy, we don’t have good railway system, most of our goods are being moved by trucks; agricultural products, crude oil and all that and yet you went and put import duty of vehicles at 35%, especially when the exchange rate has depreciated by almost 100%”.
“We are dealing with the depreciation in the exchange rate and you raised the tariffs to 35%; that is putting a lot of pressure on people. The other day tanker drivers made a case that this automobile policy is affecting tankers. And there are other charges we have to pay and you put that because you said you want to produce vehicles, how many trucks have you been able to produce”, the LCCI DG asked.
On the local assembly of vehicles, he said that it has posed a lot of problems to the citizens, saying that the local vehicles that are supposed to be affordable are not even affordable.
He urged vehicle assembly industry stakeholders to ensure that they source resources for the manufacturing of their vehicles locally.
“Yes it has posed a lot of problems to the citizens and the domestics cars that some people promised that some people promised that they will bring and it will be affordable, those cars are not there. The point I am making is that in the history of policy, if you want to industrialize, it has to be done out of the resources that we have. Some of these cars assemblies we have visited some of them you know we have as many as 50 car assembly companies because the law says you can have an assembly right and get concessioned so we have a multiplication of vehicles assembly plants. If you get to some of their garages nothing concrete is happening there. We have situation where they couple vehicles abroad and bring it down to come and couple is that the type of manufacturing that we are talking about, that is not manufacturing”
He called for the urgent need to set up policies that will encourage agro allied industries in Nigeria even as he called for the need for the country to produce its own materials.
“Policy is very important we have to get the policies right, it is good to industrialized but you will first of all source for what we call resource based industrialization, there should be an agro allied industry that is where the strength is. You have to source for your materials locally. There should be chemicals for the manufacturing of fertilizers this is where we have strength. We can do refining we have not done all these we are going into vehicles production is that the best thing to produce. We should be producing our own materials and this is where we have strength, we can go into refining of Nigerian products. So policy is very important, it is can lead to high cost of production, high domestic demands and all that. This is a major reason for compliance. Some of us are actually confused on who is in-charge of policies, these are some of the places we have issues. There are also some policies like the automotive policies, high rate of tariff on vehicle” he concluded.
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